Sustainable Catalyst Platform
Sustainable Catalyst Decision Studio
Decision Studio is a sustainability decision-support module for turning a project, policy, investment, infrastructure choice, or organizational decision into a structured, reviewable brief.
Use it to frame the decision, compare environmental, social, economic, and governance factors, surface assumptions and risks, run calculator-backed reasoning, and generate an auditable starting point for further human review.
Four-Pillar Framework →
Decision Studio vs. Workbench →
Methodology →
Suggest a Feature →
Live decision-support module
Use the Studio
Enter a decision scenario and review the generated structure. The Studio is designed to help turn rough sustainability questions into explicit assumptions, pillar scores, tradeoff notes, scenario outputs, and a decision brief that can be challenged, revised, and exported.
Sustainable Catalyst Platform · Decision Studio v2.0.0
Sustainable Catalyst Decision Studio
Structured sustainability decision support for projects, policies, procurement choices, scenarios, risk, and four-pillar evaluation.
Project intake
Define the decision question
Capture the project, policy, procurement, retrofit, supplier, or strategy decision before scoring it.
Unified evidence and platform handoffs
Source → Research → Observe → Model → Validate → Trace → Decide
Decision Studio now accepts a shared typed-artifact envelope from the current Sustainable Catalyst platform. Every import can retain its source product, version, artifact identifier, methodology, freshness, confidence, integrity hash, and transformation history.
Sources and citations
Knowledge Library
Import durable source records, quotations, Harvard-style citations, bibliographies, collections, and evidence notes.
Packet target: evidence_registry
Research routes and gaps
Research Librarian
Import research routes, recommended sources, evidence gaps, related titles, and follow-up questions.
Packet target: research_routes
Indicators and observations
Site Intelligence
Import indicators, country dossiers, live observations, methodology records, source health, and freshness context.
Packet target: live_evidence
Calculations and models
Workbench
Import formulas, calculations, graphs, models, code outputs, validation checks, assumptions, and technical reports.
Packet target: calculation_trace
Experiments and scientific artifacts
Research Lab
Import experiments, notebooks, datasets, instrument context, validation results, provenance, and scientific reports.
Packet target: experimental_evidence
Entities and Evidence Ledger
Platform Core
Import canonical entities, Evidence Ledger records, provenance links, identifiers, signatures, and shared exchange metadata.
Packet target: platform_registry
Decision synthesis
Decision Studio
Synthesize typed evidence into scenarios, readiness findings, an auditable brief, and export bundle.
Packet target: integrated_decision_brief
scds-platform-artifact/1.0 is additive. Legacy Canvas, Data, Analytics R, Global Impact, Narrative Risk, Finance, and Grit JSON exports remain importable through compatibility adapters.Typed artifact import
Paste a product artifact or legacy JSON export
Select a source product or use auto-detect. Typed envelopes are validated before they are normalized into evidence, research, model, experiment, entity, provenance, and audit sections.
Brief readiness & review status
Quality gates before export
Review whether the Decision Packet is ready for a draft brief, reviewed export, or further evidence work. The readiness gate checks framing, evidence, scenarios, impact, claims, finance, recovery, audit/provenance, and synthesis.
Decision governance & review center
Assign accountability, control review, and record human approval
Move the Decision Packet through a controlled lifecycle with a named owner, assigned reviewers, approval conditions, exceptions, conflict declarations, sign-offs, expiration dates, and a tamper-evident review history.
v1.12.0 collaborative workspace
Collaborative Decision Room
Private WordPress-managed rooms for participants, comments, change requests, snapshots, version comparison, notifications, and approved-version locks.
Institutional and Domain Decision Packs
Apply a reusable decision methodology without hiding the evidence or governance requirements
Select a pack to populate required intake, criteria, evidence, indicators, Workbench models, review roles, risk questions, readiness rules, and briefing templates.
climate energy
Climate and Energy Strategy
Evaluate decarbonization, energy transition, resilience, affordability, and implementation pathways.
6 evidence requirements · 6 criteria · 5 review roles
infrastructure capital
Infrastructure and Capital Investment
Compare capital programs using lifecycle performance, resilience, public value, delivery risk, and maintainability.
6 evidence requirements · 6 criteria · 5 review roles
urban resilience
Urban Resilience
Assess urban interventions across hazards, infrastructure interdependencies, vulnerable populations, and recovery capacity.
6 evidence requirements · 6 criteria · 5 review roles
procurement
Sustainable Procurement
Compare procurement choices using total cost, supplier risk, lifecycle impact, labor and human-rights concerns, and contract governance.
6 evidence requirements · 6 criteria · 5 review roles
responsible ai
Responsible AI and Technology Governance
Evaluate AI or digital-system adoption across purpose, evidence, rights, safety, accountability, data governance, and operational controls.
6 evidence requirements · 6 criteria · 5 review roles
research governance
Research Program Approval
Review a proposed research program across significance, methodology, feasibility, ethics, data stewardship, and reproducibility.
6 evidence requirements · 6 criteria · 5 review roles
environmental management
Environmental Intervention
Compare restoration, conservation, remediation, or management interventions using ecological evidence, uncertainty, durability, and community effects.
6 evidence requirements · 6 criteria · 5 review roles
humanitarian development
Humanitarian and Development Programming
Assess programs across need, protection, effectiveness, localization, feasibility, accountability, and conflict sensitivity.
6 evidence requirements · 6 criteria · 5 review roles
policy governance
Organizational Policy
Evaluate organizational policies across purpose, authority, evidence, feasibility, rights, implementation, and reviewability.
6 evidence requirements · 6 criteria · 5 review roles
advisory
Advisory Diagnostic and Recommendation
Structure evidence-based advisory diagnostics, options, recommendations, implementation conditions, and client approval records.
6 evidence requirements · 6 criteria · 5 review roles
Decision Briefing and Publication Studio
Turn a governed Decision Packet into a citation-native publication
Create executive memos, technical reports, board briefs, alternatives analyses, public dossiers, appendices, implementation plans, dissenting views, and monitoring plans.
v1.14.0 lifecycle control
Outcomes, Monitoring, and Reassessment
Track commitments after approval, compare actual results with expected outcomes, surface invalidated assumptions and emerging risks, and create human-owned reassessment, amendment, or retirement records.
Human-control boundary: monitoring may identify deviations and trigger reassessment, but it cannot automatically amend, suspend, approve, or retire a decision.
Public API, embeds & institutional integration
Publish safe summaries and exchange governed Decision Packets
Create governance-gated public dossiers, script-free readiness and scenario descriptors, signed institutional archives, Platform Core gateway records, and hash-addressed internal events.
v1.16.0 · Accessibility, Offline Use, and Release Hardening
Validate access, recovery, migrations, and production release gates
Run an explicit engineering readiness review for keyboard and assistive-technology support, offline drafts, recovery snapshots, large-packet performance, backup and restore, privacy, and additive packet migration.
v2.0.0 · Connected Decision Intelligence Platform
End-to-end decision lifecycle
Assess the active Decision Packet across Frame, Research, Evidence, Model, Compare, Challenge, Review, Approve, Publish, Implement, Monitor, and Reassess. The platform routes gaps to the right Sustainable Catalyst product while preserving human control.
Four-pillar scorecard
Environmental, social, economic, and governance scoring
Use transparent weights and indicators to compare viability across the four pillars.
Risk and resilience
Map exposure, vulnerability, and mitigation capacity
Screen risk across cost, implementation, environmental, stakeholder, and governance dimensions.
Advanced Scenario & Sensitivity Studio
Compare alternatives, vary assumptions, find thresholds, and inspect uncertainty
Model any number of alternatives, apply weighted criteria, run one-way and two-variable sensitivity screens, search for break-even points, compare time horizons, and review stakeholder distribution and reversibility.
Compatibility scenario matrix
Workbench handoff
Send deeper calculations, graphs, and technical checks to Workbench
Decision Studio synthesizes the decision. Workbench performs deeper symbolic, graph, engineering, scenario, risk, economics, environmental QA/QC, and domain-specific analysis.
Saved Decision Packets & Export Center
Save the packet, reload prior work, and export the full decision bundle
Decision Studio can preserve the current Decision Packet as a browser-saved working record, generate a complete export bundle, and prepare JSON, Markdown, HTML, audit, readiness, scenario, and Workbench handoff exports.
Saved packets
Export bundle
Integrated brief generator
Professional decision memo from the full Decision Packet
Generate a structured brief that synthesizes framing, evidence, scenarios, impact records, claim review, finance, recovery, four-pillar scores, audit/provenance, and Workbench handoffs.
AI Decision Briefing Layer
Assumption critique, risk interpretation, and decision caveats
Generate a cautious, site-scoped decision-support brief through the configured backend AI provider when available. If the backend or provider is unavailable, Decision Studio returns a deterministic fallback brief.
Audit & Provenance
Decision packet ledger, sources, assumptions, calculations, claims, changes, and review status
Generate a structured audit appendix that shows what was entered, which module artifacts are present, which sources support the decision, which calculations were used, and which assumptions still require review.
Core modes
What Decision Studio does
Decision Studio is not a general chatbot and not a generic ESG form. It is a structured decision-support workflow for sustainability tradeoffs, scenario review, calculator-backed reasoning, and auditable brief generation.
Frame
Clarify the decision
Define the project, policy, investment, site, organization, or intervention being reviewed so the analysis starts from a clear decision rather than a vague sustainability claim.
Score
Review four pillars
Compare environmental, social, economic, and governance dimensions with visible assumptions, qualitative notes, and calculator-supported indicators where appropriate.
Brief
Generate a reviewable artifact
Produce a decision brief with assumptions, risks, tradeoffs, scenario notes, evidence reminders, unresolved questions, and next review steps.
Decision framework
Four-pillar sustainability review
The Studio organizes sustainability decisions across four linked dimensions. The point is not to force a single automatic answer, but to make the reasoning visible enough for comparison, revision, and accountability.
Environmental
Ecological and resource effects
Emissions, energy use, water, materials, ecological pressure, resilience, pollution risk, adaptation, and long-term environmental consequences.
Social
People and communities
Stakeholders, equity, labor, access, safety, public value, community effects, displacement risk, participation, and human consequences.
Economic
Costs, benefits, and feasibility
Capital costs, operating savings, incentives, ROI, payback, funding constraints, benefit-cost reasoning, affordability, and tradeoff pressure.
Governance
Accountability and implementation
Transparency, evidence quality, review status, implementation capacity, compliance awareness, ownership, institutional risk, and auditability.
Calculator-backed reasoning
Models underneath the brief
Decision Studio combines narrative structure with calculator-supported reasoning. The goal is to keep outputs inspectable: numbers should have assumptions, assumptions should be visible, and recommendations should remain reviewable.
Weighted scorecard
Four-pillar comparison
Combine pillar scores and weights into a transparent decision-quality view, while preserving qualitative notes and limitations.
Emissions and resources
Environmental estimates
Estimate emissions reductions, resource effects, efficiency changes, and environmental tradeoffs when enough inputs are available.
Finance
Cost and benefit logic
Review capital costs, operating savings, ROI, payback, NPV-style reasoning, financial feasibility, and tradeoff pressure.
Risk
Uncertainty and resilience
Surface implementation risks, assumption sensitivity, resilience concerns, uncertainty flags, and review questions before decisions harden.
Scenario comparison
Alternatives under constraint
Compare options such as baseline, moderate change, high investment, delayed implementation, or lower-cost alternatives.
Decision brief
Structured output
Generate a brief that records decision framing, pillar review, tradeoffs, assumptions, risk notes, evidence reminders, and next steps.
Outputs
What the Studio should produce
A useful decision-support tool should leave behind a reviewable record. Decision Studio is designed to produce artifacts that can be inspected, shared, revised, exported, and connected back to the Sustainable Catalyst methodology.
Brief
Decision narrative
A concise sustainability decision brief with context, pillar review, recommendation posture, major risks, and open questions.
Scores
Pillar summary
Environmental, social, economic, and governance views summarized in a way that makes scoring assumptions visible.
Exports
Portable records
JSON, CSV, and print-friendly output paths for audit trails, documentation, revision, and future integration.
Handoff
Next analytical step
When the decision requires deeper modeling, the Studio should route users to the Workbench, module demos, methodology, or GitHub repository.
Relationship to Workbench
Decision Studio and Workbench are connected, but different
Decision Studio is a focused decision-support module. Workbench is the broader analytics, calculator, visualization, validation, equation-routing, and learning pathway layer across Sustainable Catalyst.
Use Decision Studio when
You have a sustainability decision to structure
- You need a decision brief.
- You want four-pillar sustainability review.
- You are comparing options or scenarios.
- You need visible assumptions, tradeoffs, and risks.
- You want an auditable starting point for review.
Use Workbench when
You need broader analytics or learning pathways
- You need calculators beyond one decision brief.
- You want graphs, visual analytics, or model outputs.
- You are working through math, science, economics, psychology, governance, or systems modeling.
- You need article-aware calculator routing.
- You want to explore Sustainable Catalyst topics broadly.
Operating flow
From decision question to reviewable brief
The Studio workflow is strongest when it is treated as a structured review process rather than a final answer machine.
- DefineDecision
- ScorePillars
- ModelTradeoffs
- CompareScenarios
- BriefOutput
- ReviewAssumptions
- ExportRecord
decision → pillars → calculators → scenarios → risks → brief → export → Workbench or methodology follow-up
Use cases
Where Decision Studio fits
Decision Studio is useful when a sustainability question needs more structure before it becomes a report, investment case, policy memo, technical model, or implementation plan.
Energy and emissions
Efficiency or transition decisions
Compare retrofit options, renewable energy investments, emissions reductions, cost tradeoffs, and implementation risks.
Infrastructure
Resilience and public systems
Review infrastructure choices across environmental exposure, social benefit, economic feasibility, and governance capacity.
Procurement
Supplier or technology choices
Structure tradeoffs among cost, quality, emissions, labor, risk, implementation, evidence, and long-term public value.
Policy and programs
Public-interest decisions
Turn a policy, program, or initiative into a decision brief with stakeholders, assumptions, indicators, risks, and next review steps.
Technical architecture
WordPress interface, analytical backend, and AI-assisted briefing
Decision Studio is designed as a WordPress-integrated module backed by a Render-hosted FastAPI service. The frontend should remain simple, while the backend handles analysis, AI-assisted briefing, deterministic fallbacks, exports, and future integrations.
Interface
WordPress shortcode
The page embeds the Studio with a shortcode, keeps the tool close to the platform explanation, and allows future page-level variants.
Backend
Python / FastAPI
The backend can handle calculator logic, scenario analysis, brief generation, AI provider routing, validation, and export-ready outputs.
AI layer
Gemini or fallback briefing
When configured, Gemini can assist with decision briefs. If AI is unavailable, the Studio should still return deterministic structured output.
Open development
Inspect the repository and suggest improvements
Decision Studio should improve in public: better calculators, clearer exports, stronger validation, cleaner brief templates, Workbench handoffs, SDG and planetary-boundary mapping, and more transparent assumptions.
Boundaries
Educational decision support, not professional advice
Decision Studio is for learning, exploration, structured analysis, and decision-support reasoning. Outputs depend on user inputs, assumptions, data quality, calculator maturity, backend availability, AI-provider behavior, and human review.
